"Father!" It was the cry of victory well won. "Father! I am so glad!" over and over again. "All my life, Father, I have expected the good thing to happen because of you, the right thing, I am so glad!" Laughing, crying, she kissed him, took the letter and stole to the door. "Piney shall be its bearer," she cried as she went, "Piney shall take it; he will say the very best that there is to say!" She ran out, and the door swung quickly behind her, so that she did not see that he put his hand over his empty pocket and held his heart with a great relief; then pitched forward suddenly, his head on the desk, a look of late-come, profound peace on his face. _Chapter Seventeen_ JUST A BOY It was not quite dark when Piney left Miss Sally Madeira in the garden back of Madeira Place, the Grierson letter in the inside band of his hat. The pretty spring day had closed in grey and sullen, and a high wind tore through the bluffs. Up in Canaan people were going anxiously to their windows, and trying to decide what was about to happen out there in that whirl of dust and wind and high-spattering rain. Down at Madeira Place it was grey, windy, and damp, but the rain had not come on yet. Piney went down the bridle-path from the Madeira grounds and out into the river road at a gallop, and the pony sped on like mad toward the little shack down stream at Redbud. All the way Piney kept a watch on the Di, which was sucking and booming. Long before he reached Redbud the boy had begun to hope that Steering had not put through his evening programme to that last number of going back to Redbud by water, after the haunting visit to the waters about Madeira Place. The river seemed very black and restless with the long urge of the spring rains within her. Now and again, he called loudly, prompted by some fear, he knew not what: "Steerin'! Steerin'! Steerin'!" He reached Redbud by and by, to find no Steering, only the little empty shack. The lean bunks, swaddled roughly in their bedding, looked strangely deserted. Piney sat down on Steering's bunk for a moment to take breath. Once his hand patted the covers, and once he stooped down and clung to the pillow. "Oh, may God bless you! For I love him, my dear Piney! Bless you, for I love him, my dear Piney!" he kept saying over and over, with an hysterical quaver in his voice, his lips pale and moving constantly. "Oh, may God bless you, for I love him, my dear Piney!" It was what Salome Madeira had said to him when he had left her, a white, angelic figure, swaying a little toward him, there in the garden back of Madeira Place. "Oh, may God--for I love him!"